"The Importer reported a generic error" I have done everything I can think of... Please help!

[Christian26360406qnwh]

I got about 10 hours into an edit and was close to finishing when I came back the next day nearly all my clips showed up as "media offline" on my adobe sequence. I was able to locate the files with ease. But when I try to link them, this pops up (see attached image).

I have looked at corrupted file videos on YT and not had much success...

I attempted to copy the files and link them there, it worked for a chunck of the viceos to re-link but then a lot of them had to be done 1 by 1 until adobe would stop responding and I was forced to terminate the program and start again. This process was repeated several times to no avail.

The video files play normally when clicked on. I have restarted the app and computer several times and even run a virus scan on the computer and hard drive. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. The file names and structures have not changed. I cannot figure out why it will not load them.

I started anohter project with different footage from the same hard drive and it seems to be working just fine.

Is there a way to salvage the edit or do I have to start over?

(The auto save versions have done this as well).

[Ishan Y]

Hey Christian,

Sorry about the poor experience. Which version of Premiere Pro are you working on? For clarification, you see the File Import Failure after your Media went offline and you tried linking it again. Is that correct? Are these source files saved in an external hard drive? If so, could you try moving the file to internal storage and relinking the footage?

Thanks,

Ishan

[Peru Bob]

Try creating a new project and import the old one into it.

[Caroline25314451lilq]

Hi,
I've been having the same problem, but my case is a bit more chaotic.
I contantly get  "Generic Error" messages when I import videos, but the error seems to "chose" the the footage at random, which makes wonder wether this is a corrupted file problem or a Premiere problem.
I have imported files from a variety of drives, recorded from multiple cameras models and formats (.mov, .mp4), and the error aways seem to come as a bit of a lottery: i might get an error importing a file that will import just fine after restarting my computer. 
What I have tried so far:
1. Moving my source files to different drives.
2. Clean reinstalls.
3. Cleaned all my preferences.
4. Checked my video files outside of Premiere (none of them come up corrupted).
5. Fully cleaned the media cache.
6. Performed a rollback (to 22.5).
7. Checked codecs.
8. Changed file names.

I have also noticed that the problem seems to get a lot worse when I try to import files in bulk. When dragging and dropping single files I dont get as many errors.
Nothing seems to work, and I am running out of options. This issue is seriously affecting my workflow, to the point where I have missed a few deadlines because of this. So I am open to any suggestion that could help me.
My computer specs:
Dell G15 5511
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11400H @ 2.70GHz
4Gb NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop GPU 
16Gb DDR4
512Gb SSD (system and softwares)
1Tb SSD (files)
Windows 11 Home Single Language

[defaultc09pm495qxhn]

Still having this problem a year later. Apparently if you have numbers in your video files this is more prone to happen. Why? No clue. If anyone has a fix that doesn't evolve creating a new project, every single time, let me know.